Wearing bright shirts that say “Fighting for the Schools that Oakland Students Deserve” and holding supportive posters, nearly 500 parents, students, teachers and community members rallied at San Antonio Park on Tuesday before marching to the Oakland Unified School District headquarters on Broadway. Contract negotiations between the Oakland Education Association (OEA) and the school district have been going on for a year, and after meeting for three days for nearly nine hours each day, the union and district bargaining teams…
Bumping music, energetic people and booths selling food were all apart of the festivities at the sixth annual Oakland Running Festival on Sunday. The day included a marathon, half-marathon, a 4-person relay, a 5k and a kids’ fun run. Starting at 7 am, people from all over the Bay Area biked, walked and drove to Snow Park near Lake Merritt where the race began and ended. In total, 9,678 registered runners from 34 states and eight foreign countries ran for…
Frank Ogawa Plaza was filled with over 100 people wearing pink clothing or pink ribbons on Friday in support of ending violence against women. The rally was led by Bay Area Rising, an all-volunteer team dedicated to feminist principles and ending violence against women all over the world. A branch of the 1 Billion Rising campaign, the biggest mass action to end violence against women, Bay Area Rising has led a rally on February 13 and a celebration on February 14 for…
Saturday’s ManUp! Conference bought in students from throughout the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), from elementary to high school.
Since its founding in 1995, Oakland Dollars for Scholars has had trouble rounding up funds for their scholarship recipients. The non-profit community organization seeks to pry open the doors to higher education that rising costs have closed to many students in traditionally-underrepresented communities. But with more donations coming from board members than from the community, scholarship amounts and the number of recipients they can serve have been uncertain each year. “We haven’t really been able to rally support from the…
It started with a bargaining tactic, and continued on Wednesday afternoon as a group of about 70 parents, students, and teachers walked down Park Boulevard carrying signs and shouting that they wanted a fairer contract. The march led to a packed school board meeting, as teachers, parents, and community members eagerly waited to speak about an item that didn’t appear on the agenda: contract negotiations between Oakland’s teachers and the school district. Negotiations between teachers, psychologists, counselors and the district…